TSA officials give inside look at Orlando airport security tech

Under Orlando International Airport are rooms with many rows of industrial X-ray machines, swallowing luggage of many sizes and taking hundreds of multi-angle scans of each.

The airport’s bowels were put on display Thursday by TSA officials, who called it a rare look behind the scenes to showcase how their security system can give each passenger as many as 20 looks.

When asked what kinds of innocent contents trigger alarms, security director Jerry Henderson offered a suggestion: “If you pack any peanut butter, don’t wrap your curling iron around it.”

Food densely packed into a bag can resemble explosives to the automated machines, Henderson said.

But the X-ray machines take so many scans of a bag, despite handling 40,000 to 50,000 items a day, that it often doesn’t take long for an inspector to rule out a bomb using images.

But in rooms adjoining the X-ray machines are technicians, opening bags that can’t be confirmed as safe through scans. Each opened bag is left with a note explaining what had happened.

As many fliers know, security intensifies in the lines for checks of identification and boarding passes.

“There are a lot of security features embedded into the boarding pass,” officer John Joiner said.

Passengers are scanned for anything “outside of their body’s natural contour,” training manager Matthew Field said.

If a water bottle is found in a carry-on bag, it can be analyzed for explosive chemicals. Some passengers may have their skin swabbed in another test for explosives.

Also on duty Thursday was Zoli, a 3½-year-old, German shorthaired pointer trained as a bombdetection canine.

Zoli works shifts typically as long as 30 minutes, sniffing 1,000 passengers in that time, and sitting down next to one carrying even a tiny whiff of explosive.

Another dog, Thor, scrutinized a line of passengers before picking a bearded man — a TSA decoy — as if attached by a tight string to the man.

“You have seen six or seven of the 20 layers of security,” Henderson said.